drop out” if you did not like what you saw and heard in the first several weeks of classes. Flexibility and freedom replaced the old values of structure, discipline, and coherence or, as some would have it, rigidity, authoritarianism, and conventional thinking.

fais ce que voudras was in the air if not yet in the classroom. That was still to come with successive curricular reforms through the seventies and eighties, which brought greater and greater fragmentation to programmes and professors in the name of intellectual freedom and expressive diversity.

The faculty in the University College Department of French, as in the federated colleges, had long been a mix of Canadians and incomers, but never in such numbers, never with such a variety of interests and experience. From 1960 to 1975 more than sixty full-time appointments were made to the department, to which were added in parallel and rapid succession, visitors for a day, a term, or a year, who came and went, adding to the basic mix the zest of eminence and obscurity, stimulation and the razor. In September department heads at University

College would rise with a mixture of pomp and personality at the first College Council meeting of the academic year to introduce, at ever-increasing length, the new additions to their ranks for the coming year. What was but a trickle of names in the early years of the decade, by the time of the introduction of the New Programme in 1969-70, had become a flood that crested at fifty-seven full-time appointments in fewer than ten years and left in its wake an astonishing flotsam and jetsam of talents in which the arcane, the archival, the epistemological, the erudite, the hermeneutic, the linguistic, the phonetic, the semiotic, and the stylistic were all represented. Toronto had formed the largest, and certainly the most diverse, department of French studies in North America.

As noted in the last chapter, in 1959-60 John Flinn, a native Torontonian,

had returned to his alma mater (though not his own college) after twelve years of study and teaching in France. He was to play an important part for many years in the graduate activities of the department. His grand tour had included, indeed been subsidized by, the Second World War, and his personal experience was to anticipate the coming internationalism of scholarly circles. He was followed in 1960-61 by another medievalist, Peter Dembowski, who had survived the Warsaw uprising of 1944 to come to the University of British Columbia and then to Berkeley for his PhD before accepting a post at Toronto. Eldon Kaye, a New Zealander with a yen for travel and a doctorat de l’université from Besançon, and Peter Moes, a native of Holland, who completed a doctorate at the University of Toronto with a critical edition of the Barbier de Séville, were appointed lecturers the same year. Kaye soon travelled on to Ottawa, and Moes removed to

Scarborough College in 1965. If Flaubert’s parrot has become an icon of the master, then so too should Moes’s canary Figaro, his muse and his musical companion, be recorded here.

Pierre Ducretet, a phonetician born in Paris, arrived in Toronto in 1961, the first in a series of appointments that would increase the importance of the practical and theoretical study of spoken French in the curriculum. Ducretet, along with Pierre Léon, carried forward the initiatives of Eugène and Pauline Joliat in creating the first modern language laboratory in the country with the installation of the Chester dialogue system in 1965-66, and he also pioneered the use of computers for literary study in the university. Pierre Robert, another French-born, largely American-trained academic, with a PhD from Berkeley, joined the department as an associate professor in 1962 following several years at the University of British

Columbia. He had also studied there as an undergraduate after six years of wartime service in the Free French Navy and the Merchant Marine. Large, affable, and a mischievous raconteur, Robert eventually replaced Dana Rouillard as chairman of the college department in 1969. Rouillard was the last of the departmental heads (a title without term), and Pierre Robert was to be the first and last chairman of the University College Department of French. The position disappeared in 1975 after the restructuring of the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Memorandum of Agreement, which redefined the role of the colleges within the faculty and eliminated the college departments as they had existed since 1890.

who also had some experience of American universities.

Three appointments in 1963 were followed by four in 1964. Pierre Léon, a phonetician from Besançon, energetic and enterprising, had soon established with a few rudimentary machines an Experimental Phonetics Laboratory that was eventually to produce a long list of graduate specialists and an impressive array of publications. Léon’s infectious energy spilled over into culinary and artistic undertakings as well. An accomplished chef and enthusiastic bec-fin, he was also a fibre artist of banners and the author of several children’s books, among which was a book of animal and linguistic metamorphoses. Cécile Cloutier, a native of Quebec educated at Laval and in France, brought another sort of artistic expertise to the department as a practising poet. Graham Falconer, a visitor from Oxford for a year who was invited to stay on as a permanent member of the department,

added an interest in genetic criticism to the growing list of new and reformulated approaches to textual study. During the winter of 1973 the tall, curly-haired figure of Professor A.G. Falconer of the University of Toronto cut a swath through the retail stores of downtown Toronto with a series of fraudulent cheques for Royal Doulton figurines and other objets d’art, before being apprehended by Detective Falconer of the Metro Fraud Squad, in a scenario more reminiscent of Bobby Watson than Sherlock Holmes. To the relief of Pierre Robert, then chairman, and other colleagues, this connoisseur of the rare and beautiful was not our own A.G. Falconer but an imposter. Claude Perruchot, the fourth appointment in this prelude, was a French academic who came to Toronto circuitously through philosophy and posts in Istanbul, Cairo, and Boston despite an intractable fear of the contaminating effects the English language might have upon his French.

Après lui le déluge. Appointments increased dramatically to an average of seven or more a year from 1965 to 1969, then tapered off after 1971. The mood and the plentiful funding of the sixties ended, and a slow numerical decline began that lasted into the nineties. G. Norman Laidlaw, foremost member of the academic septet of 1965, was no stranger to the University of Toronto and an established scholar with lengthy experience and publications on both sides of the 49th parallel. He was appointed professor in University College and Erindale, the first to be named to the as yet-unformed French group of the latter college. George Trembley, of Swiss origin and trained in France, but part American through a Yale PhD and his mother, was named to University College with cross-appointment to Scarborough, the other satellite college, still under construction to the east. He and Laidlaw represented a dramatic increase in the strength of teaching and research in the literature of the ancien régime. Pierre

Bouillaguet from the Corrèze joined the growing line of francophones from abroad who had first come to the United States before discovering Canada, as their compatriots had done more than three centuries earlier. Bouillaguet’s wide-ranging interests and outspoken opinions soon made him a favourite with both students and colleagues. His participation in the Madame de Graffigny project has been a consequence of his particular focus on theatre and the eighteenth century. Daniel Jourlait and Christina Roberts, cross-appointed to University College and New College, were before long to be part of the staffing of the latter, and David Trott, also appointed in 1965, was destined to play a key role in the development of French studies at Erindale. Raymond Brazeau would soon move to Trinity College.

In the following year, the arrival of Henry Schogt brought new emphasis in the

department to the burgeoning field of linguistics and the related areas of semantics, philology, and general phonetics. Educated in Holland, with teaching experience in France and at Princeton and interests in translation and Russian literature as well, Schogt represented a new and important strain of scholarship in the department. A keen personal interest in helping students was to mark his career, particularly in the graduate school. Roger Hrubi, who had moved to Paris from his native Hungary during the uprising of 1956, was another European travelling west, attracted from studies and teaching at the Sorbonne to the brave new world of linguistics at Toronto in 1966.

Many of these appointments to University College were made jointly to one or other of the new constituent colleges and took advantage of the existing administrative structures of the “university” college in order to set up collateral

groups of faculty and courses in these centres. Thus Jane Bancroft went to Scarborough and Edward Heinemann, Owen Miller, and Andrew Oliver to New College, while Ben-Zion Shek remained at University College. Shek, a Canadian citizen born in Palestine, had been a teacher in the Ontario high schools. He had spent two years in journalism at Ryerson and had extensive experience in radio and television as a writer and broadcaster before returning to the University of Toronto to complete a thesis on the French-Canadian novel. His appointment brought further depth to the teaching of the francophone literature of Canada, already long and well established in the department by the presence of David Hayne and the more recent arrival of Cécile Cloutier. Finally Terence Russon (Russ) Wooldridge was appointed lecturer in University College, although he was later to be quartered at Trinity. English-born, preparing a doctorat de l’université at Besançon on Nicot’s Thresor de la langue françoyse at the time of his arrival,

Wooldridge as a lexicographer would join a team of teachers and researchers in the expanding area of technical studies broadly encompassed by the term linguistics (theoretical and applied). Seven appointments in a single year – those were the fat ones.

The optimism of Centennial year carried this figure still higher as appointments rose to eight in 1967. Réjean Robidoux from the Université d’Ottawa, who had been a visiting professor from French Canada in the spring term that year, accepted a regular appointment, bringing the number of colleagues specializing in French-Canadian/Quebec studies to four. He was to stay for seven years. Other cross-appointments, such as Leonard Doucette, an Acadian from New Brunswick, were sent to Scarborough, or like John Gilbert, went to New College. Judith Curtis was also cross-appointed to Scarborough and Peter Findlay to

Erindale. Émile Lehouck from Brussels, who had already published a book on the French philosopher and sociologist Charles Fourier, remained at University College, an important addition to the department’s nineteenth-century group. His bantering conversation belied a serious and traditional approach to scholarship, well grounded in philosophical and historical principles. Nicole Boursier, dix-septiémiste from the other side of the Franco-Belgian border, came to University College from the Université de Lille. Her thesis on the role of objects in the “nouvelle galante et historique” of the seventeenth century was the beginning of an active career in international studies related to the French novel. She became a founding member of the Société d’Analyse de la Topique Romanesque (sator). An avid amateur photographer of long standing, she has contributed informal portraits of her colleagues in motley that enhance the pages of this history. David Clandfield, cross-appointed to New College, would later become involved in

another form of the visual arts, the founding of cinema studies in the Faculty.

Alan Dainard, a native of British Columbia who had begun graduate study at Toronto, completed his doctorate at the University of Alberta and returned as an assistant professor to University College in 1968. A professional librarian as well as an academic, Dainard contributed actively to the library’s holdings in French literature and related fields. His principal research interest was the eighteenth century, and he became general editor of the Correspondance of Madame de Graffigny in 1975. Jack Yashinsky, a native of Michigan, came to University College after graduate study at the University of California (Santa Barbara) and a thesis on the comedies of Voltaire. His external career had included service as a submariner in the American navy in the Pacific during the Second World War, perhaps a hidden influence in his participation in the department’s Summer School

on the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Like Clarence Parsons, he was an accomplished artisan whose works included both the traditional and the experimental. From the still further distant island of Réunion came Marie-Renée Cornu, educated in France and an English specialist who completed her thesis on Lawrence Durrell, entitled “La Dynamique du Quatuor d’Alexandrie,” at the Sorbonne. An enthusiastic and effective teacher and an active participant in college life, Cornu rose from modest quarters in the basement beside the washrooms to the heights of the southeast tower in the space of a single year. It was there that many of the new arrivals in the department had their first taste of ivory. Cross-appointments to the other constituent colleges were six in number in 1968: John Batchelor and John Kirkness to Scarborough; Frederick Case, Yannick Resch, and Barbara Richardson (later Kwant) to New College; and Mary Raine to Erindale.

The final year of phenomenal growth was to be 1969-70, this time with the appointment of six new faculty members. The staffing of the now-established new colleges had been largely completed, and further additions would be to balance or respond to various trends and pressures. Renée Baligand, born in Marseille with a licence ès lettres from Montpellier, came to the department after nearly ten years in British Columbia, where she had completed an ma at the University of British Columbia. She began graduate studies in phonetics with Pierre Léon that led to a PhD on the phonostylistic aspects of the poetry of Raymond Queneau. Her principal interest since has been in sociolinguistics. Like Léon and other members of the department, she also has a particular fondness for cooking and gave a hands-on course in the School of Continuing Studies, beginning in 1978, entitled Cooking in French. This lasted for four years until the budget for ingredients and the swelling number of students passed each other in opposite directions. Like

many other French-born colleagues already mentioned, Albert and Germaine Chesneau came to the University of Toronto after a brief stay at an American university, he to University College, she to Erindale. Albert Chesneau was an energetic and gregarious sort, open to North American ways, although truculent and critical as well. He had done a thesis on Céline and was soon to publish a book on the theatre of Arrabal, affinities that may explain these latter characteristics. Albert and Germaine Chesneau eventually returned to France.

Peter Nesselroth, who was born in Berlin but had come to New York at the age of fifteen, joined the department from City College, where he had been an undergraduate before completing a PhD thesis on Lautréamont at Columbia. Surrealism and stylistics were his hobby-horses, reflected in the turns of cliché and cadavres exquis of his conversational style. Nesselroth later became director of

the Centre for Comparative Literature and in that function brought to the university to give seminars and public lectures many of the best-known European and American critics and scholars of literary studies. In this last year of growth, André Stein and Henry Weinberg, both also from American graduate schools, were cross-appointed to Erindale College.

Carroll Olsen from Berkeley and Philippe Martin from Belgium, both phoneticians, were added in 1970-71, the former to the University College group, the latter specifically to Pierre Léon’s Experimental Phonetics Laboratory, where his technical knowledge could be related to the theoretical researches being initiated by Léon. Olsen attracted attention to the more arcane possibilities of phonetic study through his researches into the intonation patterns of female impersonators. Marie-Paule Ducretet from Belgium was cross-appointed to

Erindale, bringing the number of new faculty to three in 1970. Cross-appointments in each of the next three years brought the era of expansion to a close: Louis Mignault in 1971 to Scarborough College, Nicole Maury in 1972 to Trinity, and Jean Rault to Erindale in 1973. Eric James, who had been a full-time instructor in the language laboratory in the late sixties, would return to the college in 1978 after completing at the Université d’Aix a doctoral thesis directed by Pierre Léon on “L’Acquisition des faits prosodiques à l’aide d’un visualiseur de paroles.” No full-time appointments were made in 1974 or 1975, and scattered appointments after those years did little to replace the growing number of retirements, occasional deaths, and departures as the faculty demographics of the sixties were reversed by changing external conditions.

As impressive as this list may be, it by no means represents the reach and scope

of the faculty in French from 1960 to 1975. A parallel listing of visitors from year to year echoes the international character and diversity of research interest of the full-time appointments to the department. Prior to the early sixties there had been birds of passage and invited visitors to University College and the School of Graduate Studies, a tradition begun in 1949-50, but with the expansion of permanent staff came a more institutionalized routine of visiting professors, usually for a term. Francis Pruner from Dijon, who had published on Antoine and the Théâtre Libre, Voltaire’s L’Ingénu, and other subjects, spent the second term of 1962-63 in Toronto. Maurice Regard, who was director of French studies at the Université d’Aix and a distinguished nineteenth-century scholar best known for his critical editions of Chateaubriand and Balzac, came as a visitor in 1964-65 and 1969-70 and then stayed on another two years before returning to France. The year 1965-66 brought two visitors to the department: Jean-Claude Chevalier

from Lille, a grammarian, philologist, and critic of modern poetry, for the fall term, to teach a graduate course on Morphology and Syntax and an undergraduate course in Semantics, as well as to give a series of public lectures; and Luc Lacourcière from Laval, founder and director of the Archives de Folklore, to inaugurate a new visiting professorship established by the Varsity Fund for scholars from French Canada.

In 1966-67 Robert Garapon from the Sorbonne, a seventeenth-century specialist of repute, came to the college along with Réjean Robidoux from the Université d’Ottawa, author of books on Roger Martin du Gard and the twentieth-century French-Canadian novel, the second holder of the visiting professorship for scholars from French Canada. Paul Vernois from Strasbourg, working in the field of modern French fiction and theatre, was a fall-term visitor in 1967-68 and

followed the usual pattern of giving a graduate and an undergraduate course, as well as a series of public lectures. Jean Mesnard from Bordeaux, author of Pascal, l’homme et l’oeuvre, was a visitor in 1968-69. Henri Mitterand from the Université de Paris viii (Vincennes) arrived in the autumn of 1970, and thus began a long relationship with the department that saw his return every second year for more than two decades. The following year Raymond Jean from Aix-en-Provence joined us in Toronto for the spring term of 1971. Henri Coulet, along with Mitterand, spent the autumn of 1972 here. Laurent Mailhot from the Université de Montréal came as a visitor in the spring of 1973. In September it was Michael Riffaterre from Columbia, followed by Jacques Allard from the Université du Québec à Montréal in the second term. This pattern of visiting professors from French Canada and abroad would continue beyond the creation of the University Department of French in 1975, although the pace slowed and

the pattern became a little erratic as budget constraints increased through the 1980s. No mention has been made of part-time appointments to the faculty at University College between 1960 and 1975 or of colleagues who stayed briefly before moving to other places or different careers. And this account can give but the slightest notion of the personalities and passions involved. Yet in the factual details, however summary, of origins, academic formation, and research pursuits, it must stand as an image of an era in which the euphoria of abundance and the freedoms of intellectual endeavour seemed paramount. The global village replaced the discrete and multiple groves of academe. Increasing contact with scholars from other countries and other traditions anticipated the demographic realities of cultural migrations and economic globalization still to come. The language of criticism reflected in its analyses of “the literary institution” and the “economy of

the text” certain powerful trends at work in the academic marketplace of the late twentieth century that, like the products of industry, were driven by the client demand of students, the productivity targets of governments, and the chief executive officers once known as university presidents.

Perhaps the tale of Frédéric Deloffre, visiting professor at uc in 1957-58 and 1959-60, summarizes our past and anticipates our future more than most. During the late sixties Deloffre became almost as celebrated in the popular press as he was in academic circles: “Mordu par un professeur de la Sorbonne, un étudiant a porté plainte” ran the headline in France-Soir on 3 October 1969. Elected by 8,500 students as head of his academic division during the events of 1968, Deloffre was in constant conflict with the more radical elements, one of whom had struck him as he removed an “insulting” poster from the walls of the Sorbonne in

September that year. In a reprise of the quarrel a year later, he found himself in hand-to-hand combat with the same student, rolling in the dust of the Sorbonne courtyard. “Je l’ai mordu pour me libérer,” he reported to the court, an action confirmed by the medical examiner, who found “à la face interne de la jambe droite une ecchymose tuméfiée de 3 à 5 centimètres.” “Il me frappa, puis, sans doute pour m’empêcher de partir, me saisit aux jambes et me mordit cruellement,” said the student, M. François Huard de la Marre. Et Deloffre d’ajouter, “Pour enseigner à la Sorbonne, il faudrait avoir une formation de parachutiste et être mis à la retraite à 40 ans!”